SILICONE VALLEY, October 26—In a large Bay Area city, more than 30 women, men, and children protested high rents, racist evictions, and homelessness—all products of the profit-mad capitalist system. Evictions are increasing in this high-tech region and disproportionately affect Black and Latin workers; the city’s Black population has dropped by half in the past twenty-five years, with 35,000 people displaced. Although Black workers now represent only 6 percent of the city’s population, they make up 25 percent of the homeless.
Fightbacks are growing. At one busy intersection, there are spirited weekly demonstrations by Residents for Renters Protection. People chant, sing, and bring posters in English and Spanish to publicize the fight, with members and friends of Progressive Labor Party protesting in solidarity. There were upraised fists, honking horns, and high fives from pedestrians and people in passing cars and buses. Most of the protesters work in low-wage food, retail and service industries. They are systematically being evicted out of this city.
Residents for Renters Protection plans to present the City Council with demands for rent stabilization on older units and against arbitrary evictions. One member lamented, “We only have one supporter on the City Council—all the others don’t want to confront the real estate cabal.” This led to discussions about bringing more workers from local unions and other organizations to the rallies in an effort to pressure the capitalist politicians to institute rent controls.
Housing for Shelter,
Not for Profit
PL’ers brought the CHALLENGE article, “Homelessness Part and Parcel of Capitalism.” It explained that the root cause of homelessness is the capitalist crisis of overproduction. As real estate developers build new condominiums and evict tenants to attract higher-paid tech workers, there is an epidemic of homelessness. Workers have no friends on the City Council or any branch of government. We can rely on only our class.
PLP captured this contradiction with a poster: “Housing for Shelter, Not for Profit.” Spanish-speaking protesters helped us translate: “Vivienda Para Vivir, Sin Fines de Lucro.” This idea spurred deeper conversations at the protest and at dinner afterward about the possibility of a communist society that would serve workers’ basic needs: decent housing, nutritious food, and meaningful work.
When we abolish money, wages and profit, the motivation of shared responsibility to provide for the health and nutrition of neighborhood families could grow. Perhaps yesterday’s small restaurants could be tomorrow’s neighborhood cafeteria for families returning from school and work, a place where neighbors could enjoy a delicious, healthy meal. Nobody will be homeless or have to live in small, decrepit apartments. Under communism, we can truly build a world where everyone’s needs are met.

On November 4, an estimated 250 workers were producing plastic bags inside Rajput Polyester Factory when the building collapsed near Lahore, Pakistan. The official death toll is 45 workers. The rest are wounded or still trapped under the debris.
Majority of these workers are teenage or young adult men from farther districts who work for about $120 a month. Many live or sleep in the factory. The factory continued to function after it took a hit from last month’s earthquake.
The politicians and bureaucrats are running slow rescue missions and phony investigations. The working class doesn’t need a verdict to know who’s guilty: these factory bosses and the imperialists they serve.
Whenever a disaster hits, be it blatantly capitalist like a factory collapse or caused by capitalism like Hurricane Katrina, the working-class never recovers from those conditions. Years after the garment factory collapse at Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza that murdered over 1,133 people, the conditions are still death traps. Months after the chemical explosion in Tianjin, China, many are still searching for jobs and homes.
Imperialist Rivalry in Pakistan Intensifies
The workers in Lahore, like workers everywhere, suffer one capitalist attack after another. Last year, a mosque collapsed, killing over 200. The year before that, massive floods forced masses to flee their homes. The second attack on workers in Pakistan comes in the form of imperialist rivalry. There is no excuse but capitalism for a country that can accept a $46 billion investment deal with China to build the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor but can’t invest in infrastructure?
For the bosses, be it in China, Pakistan, or the United States, their top priority is oil profits, not workers’ blood. On November 11, Pakistan handing over 2,300 acres of land in its poorest province, Baluchistan, in a 43-year tax-exempt lease to China. This move will build a network of transportation for oil and gas, connecting China directly to the Arabian Sea. As Challenge goes to press, China has taken official control of Pakistan’s Gwadar port, which, lying next to the Strait of Hormuz, is a key gateway to oil-exporting Gulf countries. This means a challenge to imperialist rival, United States. For the working class in Pakistan, it means ratcheting up exploitation, displacement if their homes are “in the way” of the economic corridor, and war.
Bury the Bosses
What should our response be to this factory collapse and economic corridor? Bury the bosses and their killer profit wars. Progressive Labor Party must respond to this attack on the working class with mass fightback. From Pakistan to Colombia to Haiti, PLP fights with and serves the working class. Comrades everywhere must raise this attack on workers in Pakistan at their local unions, jobs, hospitals, schools, and unemployment offices. Be it in the Professional Staff Congress, the Unitarian Church, or in the streets during a Challenge sale, raise international solidarity with workers in Pakistan!

BALTIMORE, OCTOBER 15 —  Antiracist struggle continues to heat up in Baltimore, from weekly West Wednesday rallies against the police murder of Tyrone West, to the powerful Freddie Gray rebellion, to this week’s occupation of City Hall!
Antiracists stunned the center of political power here by disrupting a City Council hearing on Oct. 14 over whether to make Kevin Davis Baltimore’s a permanent police commissioner. After listening to politicians supporting Davis, and testimonies from people, young people began the protest. They decided to occupy City Hall until Davis and Mayor Rawlings-Blake came to meet with them and hear their demands. Cops flooded the building. Council President Jack Young removed a majority of the public seating in the council chamber, saying it was “unsafe.” Nevertheless, these fighters staged a second protest. This persistence made it possible for the sit-in to then take place, a tense face-off that lasted almost ten hours. Davis finally answered the antiracists’ request to meet him at 4 AM, not by meeting with the group, but by ordering their arrest!
The previous police chief, Anthony Batts, had been fired by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake for not attacking the April rebellion rapidly or decisively enough. A new, more aggressive police strategy has already become apparent at recent rallies against police terror. It’s more like Ferguson, with rapid, aggressive arrests of antiracist leaders, and then further arrests based on identification from helicopter video footage.
The protest and sit-in at City Hall was organized because, although “proper” channels had been used, young people’s voices had been ignored. On the previous Monday, October 12, the members of a local antiracist group called City Bloc, released three demands and a statement with nineteen rules of engagement for the police to follow during protests. The three demands are:
Davis agree to the Bloc’s proposed guidelines for police at demonstrations.
Fire Housing Commissioner Paul Graziano. In Gilmore Homes, where Freddie Gray lived before the police killed him, and in other public housing, some maintenance officials demand sexual favors before making needed repairs. At Lakeview Towers, there has been a lack of water and heat. On top of that there has been an expansion of gentrification, instead of safe and healthy low-income housing.
Twenty million dollars invested in grassroots organizations that work with educating youth, like Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, Baltimore Bloc, City Bloc, and the Baltimore Algebra Project.
This fight is important in flexing our working-class muscles, and exposing the limits of a capitalist government. However, no amount of guidelines,  firings or funding can weaken or halt this system built on exploitation.
The Cops, Politicians
And The State
Governments under capitalism are not neutral, but liberal politicians mislead the working class with the illusion that the government can be pushed to serve our  class. In reality, the entire capitalist state always serves the capitalists. “The state” refers not to Maryland, or Oaxaca, or Gujarat, but to the main elements of power: the government, police, military and jails.
Until it is smashed with communist revolution, and until we then build a new state that will serve the working class — the capitalist state will uphold whatever businesses it wants, including police terror, and wars to secure blood-soaked profits for U.S. bosses worldwide.
This doesn’t mean fighting for the three demands isn’t a priority in this struggle! Communists in the Progressive Labor Party stand shoulder to shoulder with these fellow antiracists in fighting back. Note the bosses take back whatever demands or reforms the working class wins, when it’s convenient or necessary.
In the 1890s, a Black person was lynched in the U.S. approximately once every 40 hours.  Struggles by the civil rights movement put a stop to most lynchings, but the rope and the open gutter racism has been replaced by police bullets, with Black cops, politicians, and even president. One hundred and twenty years later, nonwhites are killed once every 28 hours or less. This is because under capitalism, racism is a tool for:  
1) making large profits from low-paid labor, and
2) oppressing the whole working class of all “races” by dividing and conquering us. That’s why white workers make less money in the U.S. South than they do in the rest of the country. A history of the most intense racism has made it especially hard to unite workers, organize unions, and fight for better pay in the South.
The State and Revolution
The capitalists have developed many tools to maintain their bloodthirsty racist rule.  One of their divisive tactics is to promote Black nationalism, including encouraging Black workers to buy only at Black-owned businesses.
One of the main supporters of this is Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. In his book, Torchlight for America, he argues that members and supporters of the Nation of Islam can live on lower wages than other workers because they are taught to reject smoking, drinking and drugs. Based on those low wages, Farrakhan argues that large Black-owned businesses in U.S. cities can compete internationally, and profit. That’s no solution. The only difference between that plan, and life today, is that a few faces at the top would be of a different complexion. For the masses of people, poverty and racism would remain just as bad as they are now!
Communism, on the other hand, includes the whole working class.  It will mean the death of racism and all forms of exploitation. Courage like the antiracists at City Hall opens the door for revolution.  However, in order to make significant gains in the class struggle against racism, and for communism, a bigger multiracial communist party is needed.  
PLP calls upon today’s fighters to stay on the road to revolution by forming communist study groups, joining the PLP, and continuing — for the long haul — to engage in sharp struggle, finally toppling capitalism and replacing it with an antiracist, communist world.

WORCESTER, MA, October 10 — The class struggle between antiracists and the capitalist state is intensifying here. In response to solidarity demonstrations with the Ferguson and Baltimore rebellions, the local government is distracting workers with token concessions and empty dialogues. Progressive Labor Party is calling out the bosses on their racism. We’re promoting the only real winning strategy: multiracial unity.  
Carrot and Stick
Since the rebellions in August 2014, the Progressive Labor Party and groups like the Communities United Collective have led the antiracist fight here. We supported college students in leading a citywide walkout and blocking traffic.  We also participated in militant meetings at Worcester City Hall.
The city government was shaken by this resurgence of student militancy and feared the outbreak of rebellion. In an effort to undermine the coalition, the city created a new position of chief diversity officer. The bosses’ politicians hoped to mute our voices by having our some of our groups’ leaders compete for it. But nobody was fooled; the antiracists understood that the position will have no real power.
To further intimidate PLP and others fighting racism and economic inequality, the city brought criminal charges against several protesters and initiated a financial audit of a neighborhood center that supports the protests.
DOJ Distractions
When he city recently invited the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to hold so-called “Dialogues on Race,” PLP recognized this sham to distract people from the crimes of capitalism: police terror, racist unemployment, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Even worse, you could count the number of Black and Latin workers present on one hand.
We used these DOJ meetings to explain how the profit system requires racist police terror to divide workers and impose its economic misery. We also called out the Worcester police as brutal and racist, noting that one local cop is being tried for beating a shackled prisoner while using racist hate speech. At the last DOJ hearing, PL’ers shouted from the floor while holding signs in front of the stage that accusing the city organizers of being part of the disease that is racism in the City.
These dialogues are an opportunity for PLP to meet antiracist workers and raise antiracist, antisexist issues. But we also know they have limitations. DOJ reformers can never end racism or police terror because their job is to maintain capitalism.
As a follow-up, Progressive Labor Party and the Massachusetts Human Rights Committee held a forum titled “Reform and Revolution.”
Divided We Fail
PLP also challenged ideas that white workers should organize separately from Black workers, a doomed strategy. The super-exploitation of Black, Latin, Asian and immigrant workers opens the door for attacks on white workers. Our struggles are interrelated; we must fight as one united working class. These struggles and forums have moved several people closer to PLP.
We need the unity of workers, students, and soldiers willing to smash this racist system. Along the way, we will continue to struggle with our friends and comrades who have nationalist ideas. We will continue the struggle for multiracial unity and against reformist ideas being peddled by the ruling class. Only communism will end racism. Join us!